The Dallas World Aquarium sparked an international dispute this week when officials tried to bring six endangered pygmy three-toed sloths from a Panamanian island to Dallas.

Aquarium officials insist they had all the permits needed to transport the animals, but the protesters who greeted them Tuesday at the airport in the Panamanian province of Bocas del Toro weren’t convinced.

Neither were police, who suggested that aquarium officials think twice about leaving with the sloths, which are found solely on Isla Escudo de Veraguas.

Eventually the officials turned the sloths over to the locals, who released them back on the island — but not before protesters reportedly threw rocks at their plane and trapped them in a van, threatening to release them only once the sloths were freed.

“It got a little scary there for everybody,” said Daryl Richardson, the aquarium’s chief executive.

A news story out of Panama said the downtown Dallas aquarium tried to take the animals “without any explanation or permission.”

But Luis Sigler, a conservation biologist with the aquarium, said he and his team applied for and received collection and exportation permits from the National Environmental Authority of Panama in March.

Officials with that agency did not return messages, but Sigler said it would put out a news release Tuesday backing the aquarium’s account.

“Everything was in order,” he said. “The only thing is these people weren’t happy if Americans took animals from Panama.”

Sigler and Richardson, who say they want to study the animals’ digestive and reproductive habits, said the aquarium has been involved in conservation efforts on Isla Escudo de Veraguas, going so far as to fund rangers who patrol the island in boats provided by the aquarium.

This isn’t the first time the aquarium has drawn criticism for exporting animals from other countries. In 1997, Richardson scuttled a plan to import four Amazon River dolphins from Venezuela.

That decision came after prominent conservationists, including noted primatologist Jane Goodall, objected to the plan.

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